Saturday, July 13, 2013

The Space Coast

One of Florida's greatest claims to fame, the Space Coast is the area around Merritt Island (where NASA launched Space Shuttles from Kennedy Space Center until the last voyage on July 8, 2011) and Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, the site of various space launches both civilian and military. Cities in the area include Titusville, Rockledge, Cape Canaveral, Cocoa, Cocoa Beach, Melbourne and Palm Bay. One of the Space Coast's area codes is "321", which was chosen as a deliberate nod to the "3-2-1, liftoff" countdown of space launches.

You can watch rocket launches from a number of handy points on the island, as delineated in the graphic below, swiped from spacecoastlaunches.com.

The place is a veritable space-geek's wet dream, but even without all the rocketry going on, there's plenty of good old fun and sun going on. Me, I like to hang out on Cocoa Beach and slug 'em back at the Mai Tiki Bar on the pier, 800 feet out over the Atlantic.